Florida Dream continued. . .

Katherine Tippetts, Sarah Armistead, and the other prominent women noted above were talented and resourceful individuals who made St. Petersburg a better place in which to live. Nevertheless, they accomplished far less than they might have. With very few exceptions, their visions of reform, like those of their male counterparts, were obstructed by an impenetrable wall of racist ideology. The fact that many of these women had successfully scaled the barriers of sexual prejudice did not seem to give them any special empathy for those men and women who were trapped behind the barriers of racial prejudice. On a personal level, their dealings with black servants and laborers - the only blacks they were likely to encounter - may well have been governed by a generous spirit of kindness and compassion. But, publicly, these women of privilege did little or nothing to challenge an exploitative and degrading system of racial control.

During the early twentieth century, the white south was totally committed to the twin concepts of white supremacy and racial segregation. in St. Petersburg, as in other southern cities, interaction between blacks and whites was ruthlessly and systematically controlled by a combination of custom and law known as "the color line" or "Jim Crow." Whites who questioned the Jim Crow system were excluded from polite society, and blacks who openly challenged the system were often subjected to physical violence or even death. Although St. Petersburg was not a classic Southern city, its racial mores were generally consistent with the vaunted Southern way of life. By the beginning of World War I, most local whites considered segregation to be immutable and could not imagine a properly ordered society without strictly defined racial barriers. Yet, despite this depth of feeling, the primacy of Jim Crow was a relatively recent phenomenon.

During the frontier era following the Civil War, the dictates of race and racism had little effect on local life. For two decades, from 1868 to 1887, the local black community consisted of a single family. John and Anna Donaldson, the ex-slaves who migrated to the area with Louis Bell, Jr., at the beginning of Reconstruction, lived uneventfully among their white neighbors. The Donaldsons eventually became landowners and reportedly earned a good living from their forty-acre farm. They also raised a large family, and during the mid-1880s they even sent several of their children to the Disston City School (also known as Prop College) run by Arthur Norwood, the same Englishman who would later give St. Petersburg its first telephone. According to historian Walter Fuller, who interviewed one of the Donaldson children many years later, no one objected to this token school integration; indeed, "nobody thought a thing about it." Thus, even though the Donaldsons undoubtedly encountered racial prejudice from time to time, the Pinellas frontier seems to have been a relatively tolerant place.

This situation began to change in 1888, when the community experienced its first real influx of black settlers. More than a hundred black laborers worked on the final stages of the Orange Belt's construction, and after the railroad was completed in 1889, a dozen or so stayed on. Joined by their families, these early black pioneers created a small subcommunity along Fourth Avenue South known as Pepper Town. Taking advantage of St. Petersburg's rapid growth, they found work as day laborers, domestics, artisans, and fishermen. As the town expanded during the 1890s, additional black settlers drifted in. A few worked on the waterfront as stevedores, and others were recruited by labor agents to work in local hotels. Most of these new black settlers lived in or near a cluster of shacks owned by Leon B. Cooper, a local white merchant. Located on Ninth Street, just south of the railroad tracks, this second black subcommunity was commonly known as Cooper's Quarters. There were other blacks, usually unmarried men, sprinkled throughout the community, and there was at least one interracial couple living on the edge of town. But the basic pattern of residential segregation was in place well before the turn of the century. Over time, as white residential areas expanded outward from downtown, the black community moved westward. But the boundaries of black settlement remained easily identifiable and nearly inviolate.

In 1910, blacks accounted for 26.6 percent of St. Petersburg's 4,127 inhabitants. Predictably, this striking figure was never included in the city's promotional leaflets. "St. Petersburg does not have a particularly large colored population," city planner John Nolens insisted in the 1920s, "but like all southern cities it has its colored section." This carefully calculated understatement may have fooled a few tourists but people who actually lived in St. Petersburg knew that the local black community had a significant and growing presence in the city. No amount of rhetoric could hide the fact that black labor was a crucial element of the local economy. Most of the women who washed the clothes and cleaned the houses and most of the men who carried the tourists' bags, paved the streets, dug the sewer lines, collected the garbage, cleaned the fish, and constructed the city's houses were black. Without the blood, sweat and tears expended by people of color, St. Petersburg would not have been the up-and-coming city that local whites praised so loudly. Most whites would not have had it any other way. But the existence of an expanding black community presented white supremacists with a dilemma: how could they exploit black labor without creating a biracial community? As slaves and masters, blacks and whites had lived together in "distant intimacy," but in a free society the simultaneous exploitation and exclusion of an "inferior" race was a much more difficult enterprise.

In St. Petersburg, as in the rest of the south, the preferred solution to this dilemma was a comprehensive system of Jim Crow laws superimposed on a sanctified code of racial etiquette. Under the Jim Crow regime, blacks were only admitted to the white world at prescribed times for prescribed reasons. Blacks were there when whites wanted them, but otherwise they lived in a separate community. During the day, blacks and whites often mingled in the streets and sometimes worked side by side, but after nightfall blacks were required to return to their own world. This nocturnal separation was mandatory, even for whites; in January 1920, the St. Petersburg police department vowed to arrest "all white men found in the Negro section late at night regardless of their age or social distinction."

St. Petersburg blacks lived in their own neighborhoods, attended their own churches and schools, swam at their own beaches, drank at their own bars, and were laid to rest in their own graveyards. Without exception, local institutions were separate and unequal. In everything from education to employment, blacks occupied the proverbial bottom rail of St. Petersburg society. Since tax support for black schools was begrudging and woefully inadequate, the black school term was barely half the length of the white term, and black teachers were paid far less than their white counterparts. This institutionalized injustice ensured that many local blacks would remain uneducated and impoverished, but most whites regarded this state of affairs as proper and natural.

Since the vast majority of local blacks worked as unskilled or semiskilled laborers, poverty was an ever-present fact of life in black St. Petersburg. Although unemployment was rare, wages were low. Some families had only the barest necessities, and many black homes were little more than tumbledown shacks. However, not all local blacks lived in desperate poverty. Some owned their own homes and businesses, and a few edged their way into the middle class. In 1920, the local black labor force included eighteen teachers, ten grocery store owners, seven barbers, seven tailors, six ministers, four insurance agents, four restaurant owners, two doctors, one dentist, and one hospital superintendent. Collectively, these middle-class occupations accounted for 6.7 percent of the local black working population. Even though many of these individuals had more modest incomes than their titles or occupations would suggest, they represented a nascent black bourgeoisie.

St. Petersburg's small but growing middle-class black economy was wholly internal and almost invisible to local whites. Blacks with money to spend had to be extremely careful, and the fact that some blacks lived better than many poor whites was rarely bandied about. As blacks knew all too well, a failure to live up to racial stereotypes was regarded as an act of betrayal by most whites. Even blacks who could afford better had no choice but to live in one-story bungalows, since any outward display of conspicuous consumption by a member of the inferior race was considered to be a serious breach of racial etiquette. From the white supremacist perspective, blacks were not supposed to own fancy carriages or automobiles, much less drive them through white neighborhoods.

St. Petersburg, like all southern cities, had its share of mean-spirited racist demagoguery. But, in keeping with the city's genteel image, racial discrimination generally was justified in paternalistic rather than Negrophobic terms. Paternalistic whites prided themselves on knowing what was best for "their negroes." In enforcing a firm and unforgiving color line, whites allegedly were protecting blacks from themselves. It was an axiom of white supremacist mythology that blacks were inferior child-like beings who could not handle the responsibilities of freedom without white supervision. During the early twentieth century, this view was constantly being reinforced by popular literature, minstrel shows, and films like D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, which enjoyed a long run at La Plaza Theater. White paternalism involved periodic acts of benevolence which softened and humanized black-white relationships. But, in the end, such acts served only to sanctify a crippling dependency based on prejudice and self-interest. This inexorable circle of deference and condescension ultimately benefited no one and frequently corrupted both giver and receiver.

Even at its best, paternalistic racism was invariable tinged with contempt. To most whites, the black community was a mysterious world that inspired feelings of fear and loathing. A common repository for white fantasies about sex and violence, it was an endless source of prurient fascination. In contrast to the romantic but mythic world of the "old time darkies," the twentieth-century black community was seen as a den of criminality and lust where primal instincts overwhelmed civilized restraint. Black communities were many and varied, but in the case of St. Petersburg, such images were more revealing about white social psychology than about black social reality. Local blacks undoubtedly produced their share of crime and social deviance. But black society in St. Petersburg was not nearly as pathological and unsophisticated as most whites believed.

Despite the prevalence of poverty, black St. Petersburg was not a community of despair. Even its poorest citizens were frequently sustained by strong kinship networks and a vital Afro-American fold culture based on religion and communal values. Single-parent households were relatively rare, and local blacks did not have to look outside their community to find inspiring role models or other sources of individual dignity and self-esteem. Although almost unknown in the white community, Ira Bryant, the principal of St. Petersburg Industrial High School, and the Rev. James B. Lake, the charismatic pastor of the Bethel Baptist Church, were heroic awe-inspiring figures to local blacks. Moreover, economic hardship and racial condescension did not prevent blacks from developing and taking pride in their own institutions. Several black fraternal organizations met regularly at the Knights of Pythias Hall (there was a separate Knights of Pythias Hall for whites), and, despite being underfunded and understaffed, Mercy Hospital gave the black community a semblance of medical care. Since city parks and public festivals were generally for whites only, blacks also created their own leisure activities, ranging from musical comedy to baseball. In fact, local black baseball teams were often so impressive that they attracted white spectators, who sat in special segregated bleachers. None of this had much impact on the basis power relationships that divided the city into two separate societies, but at least it took some of the sting out of Jim Crow.

Despite its limitations, the black church was the most important antidote to the poison of Jim Crow ideology. More than any other institution, religion dominated the life of the black community. By 1920, local blacks supported seven large congregations and numerous smaller storefront sects. As the cornerstone of the community, evangelical christianity gave the embattled black minority a measure of self-determination and a much needed outlet for emotion and creativity. St. Petersburg's black churches were comprehensive institutions which provided not only spiritual inspiration and comfort but also social support, cultural enrichment, and entertainment. Not everyone in the black community was religious but many blacks spent a major portion of their nonworking hours in church activities. At the Mount Olive Primitive Baptist Church, for example, a typical Sunday included no less than four services. Local blacks could choose from a whirl of activities - church picnics, Sunday school classes, and innumerable sermons delivered by charismatic preachers. As a general rule, black preachers were the community's most powerful leaders, often serving as both internal power brokers and external liaisons with the white community. Indeed, in the absence of black public officials, preachers frequently were called upon to fulfill political functions.

Black politics was a sensitive subject in the local white community. During St. Petersburg's early years, it was not uncommon for blacks to vote in local, state, and national elections or for white politicians to solicit black votes. But, as the black community expanded, black suffrage became increasingly controversial. During the Progressive Era, many local whites enthusiastically embraced the movement for black disfranchisement that was then sweeping the South. After years of complaining about bloc voting and the inappropriateness of allowing the black community to become the balance of power in local elections, several disgruntled Democratic Party leaders demanded an all-white primary in 1913. At the time, approximately five hundred local blacks were registered to vote, and a number of white politicians were openly courting the black vote. This alarmed James G. Bradshaw, the front-running candidate for commissioner of public affairs, who declared that he "wanted to go into public office as the choice of the white voters of the city and would rather not have the office than to rely on the negroes to win." This new policy was wholeheartedly endorsed by Lew B. Brown, the editor of the St. Petersburg Independent, who insisted that the white primary was necessary "in order to maintain control of city affairs in the hands of the white people." With Brown's help, Bradshaw got his wish, inaugurating a new era in local politics. Even though an actual "white primary" was not tried again until 1921 and many blacks continued to vote in general elections, widespread intimidation gradually reduced black participation and influence in local Democratic politics - the only politics that mattered in early twentieth-century St. Petersburg.

Blacks were encouraged to distance themselves from the world of politics. But there was no escape from the world of law and order. Although white politicians sometimes stepped into the breach - usually in an effort to prop up sagging electoral campaigns - the task of maintaining white supremacy normally was entrusted to the legal justice system. From the dominant white perspective, this system was necessary for the preservation of civic peace and a properly constituted social order. But from the black perspective, the long arm of the law represented a brutal system of racial control that meted out little justice. In St. Petersburg, as in most southern cities, the entire legal justice system was biased against blacks. Every aspect - policemen, judges, jurors, attorneys, jail guards, and prison wardens -was totally white. And since legal due process requirements often conflicted with the system's transcendent purpose, the rights of black defendants, as well as the rights of black victims, were routinely ignored. When crime involved a black victim, the police often refused to respond, but when the victim was white, the police reaction was invariably swift and harsh. Black movement was restricted by the enforcement of racially specific curfew laws, and periodic "vagrancy" sweeps cleared the streets of "undesirable" blacks needed to fill out road-gang quotas. All in all, the white system of "justice" worked efficiently and ruthlessly - for whites.

The legal justice system sustained the hegemony of the white community. But, on at least two occasions, local white supremacists felt the need to go beyond the rule of law. In 1905, and again in 1914, St. Petersburg witnessed brutal lynchings that were sanctioned by a sizable portion, if not a majority, of the local white population. The 1905 incident was triggered by the murder of city police chief James J. Mitchell. On Christmas day, Chief Mitchell arrested a local black man for disorderly conduct, but before he and his prisoner reached the city jail Mitchell was knifed to death by John Thomas, allegedly a black "drifter" who had fled from South Carolina to escape a series of criminal charges. Thomas and his friend were immediately apprehended by one of Mitchell's deputies, but within minutes some local whites were demanding summary justice. Soon after Thomas was jailed, an angry crowd surrounded the jail building. The officers on duty refused to turn Thomas over to the mob, but eventually they were forced to step aside. Making no attempt to hide their identity, several vigilantes climbed a ladder to Thomas's second-story cell and "shot him to pieces." When even this did not satisfy the mob's thirst for vengeance, the jail doors were broken down so that other members of the crowd could mutilate and kick the body. Even though the identity of Thomas's assailants was well known, no one was ever brought to trial for this heinous crime. The press reaction was muted, and the white community went back to its celebration of the Christmas season as if nothing had happened. The chastening effect on the black community can only be imagined.

Nine years later vigilante justice struck again. This time the catalyst was the murder of Edward F. Sherman, a fifty-five-year-old photographer and land developer from Camden, New Jersey. For several years Sherman had operated a photography studio on Central Avenue, but in 1913 his interests turned to real estate promotion. Having purchased an isolated stretch of woodland on John's Pass Road (Thirtieth Avenue North), he was in the midst of developing his property into Wildwood Gardens, which he touted as St. Petersburg's newest suburb, when he was killed by a shotgun blast on the night of November 10, 1914. Described as "two negroes," Sherman's assailants also robbed and assaulted his wife Mary. Although beaten with a pipe and possible rape, Mary Sherman crawled and staggered through a half-mile of underbrush to get help. By the next morning, sensational newspaper headlines and spreading rumors had triggered a massive manhunt by armed whites. Literally hundreds of black men were detained and questioned, and in some cases roughed up. Early suspicions centered on Ebenezer B. Tobin, who was whisked away to a Clearwater jail by a deputy county sheriff, and John Evans, a black laborer from Dunnellon who had been fired by Sherman three days before the murder.

On November 11, Evans was taken to the hospital where Mary Sherman was recuperating, but she was unable to identify him as one of the assailants. Evans was then released, but the subsequent discovery of blood-spattered clothes in a house where he had recently roomed led a group of vigilantes to recapture him. After hours of torture and extended but unsuccessful attempts to extract a confession, Evans was again taken before Mary Sherman. Once again she refused to identify him as one of her husband's murderers. Nevertheless, he was placed in the city jail, where a mob of fifteen hundred angry whites soon gathered. After threatening to kill the jailer, E. H. Nichols, the mob tore down part of the jail's side wall and dragged Evans into the street. After placing a noose around Evans's neck, the swelling crowd, which included at least half of the city's white population, then marched west down Central Avenue towards the back section of the city. At the corner of Ninth Street and Second Avenue south, the heart of Cooper's Quarters, a rope was thrown over an electric light pole, and Evans was hoisted up above the crowd. Terrified, Evans wrapped his legs around the light pole but an unidentified white woman in a nearby automobile pried him loose with a fatal shotgun blast. This made the ritual hanging unnecessary, but for nearly ten minutes members of the crowd emptied their weapons into Evans's swaying corpse. As one eye-witness recalled the scene, "little kids with guns were shootin', and women standing' there shootin' and screamin' and yellin' and - and shootin'. It was the damndest mess you ever heard in your life, you never heard anything like it."

In the early morning hours, after the crowd had dispersed, a policeman retrieved what was left of the body, but much of the city was still in a frenzy the following day. White vigilantes continued to roam the county looking for Evans's accomplices or sympathizers, and there was even talk of burning down the entire black community. Some local blacks vowed to stand and fight, but many others fled in terror. A few escaped by train, and others took to the woods. And still others - 179 black women and children - took the afternoon boat to Tampa.

For a time - particularly after he learned that local vigilantes were planning to storm Ebenezer Tobin's Clearwater jail cell - Governor Park Trammel considered sending in the state militia to restore order. But military intervention ultimately proved unnecessary, as calm returned to the community that billed itself as the "cleanest, cheeriest, most comfortable little city in the south." By the end of November a local coroner's jury had determined that John Evans had died at the hands of "unknown" persons, and most of St. Petersburg's black refugees had long since drifted back into the city. The wounds were reopened the following September, when Ebenezer Tobin was put on trial for murder. His conviction and subsequent execution Pinellas county's first legal hanging in late October 1915 brought to a close the most gruesome and shameful episode in St. Petersburg's history.

Neither the guilt nor the innocence of John Evans and Ebenezer Tobin can now be determined because neither man was given a fair impartial trial. Many of their contemporaries were convinced that Evans and Tobin did murder Edward Sherman, but both men steadfastly professed their innocence, and Mary Sherman twice could not identify Evans as one of the attackers. Despite this confusion, the meaning of their deaths could hardly be clearer - or more disturbing. The torture and lynching of John Evans - one of sixty-nine black men lynched in the United States in 1914 - was much more than a spontaneous act of vengeance committed by ignorant, blood-thirsty rednecks. On the contrary, the mob actinon culminated from a web of permissiveness, encouragement and secret sanctions from highly placed citizens and public officials.

Not only did a number of highly respected citizens participate inn the lynch mob, but also substantial circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that several public officials helped to plan the lynching. Police chief A. J. Easters and his officers made little effort to protect Evans from the mob; in fact, at several points they apparently encouraged the vigilante spirit that was sweeping the community. Even more ominously, on the afternoon before the lynching the local coroner's jury held a secret meeting which may have laid the groundwork for the terror that was to follow. Among St. Petersburg's image-conscious leaders, it was widely believed that swift retribution for the assault on the Shermans was the best way to restore the city's tarnished reputation. As Jon Wilson, the leading historian of the affair, has suggested, the winter tourist season was approaching and "neither killers on the loose nor armed bands of men prowling the county would be attractive to the refined northerners that St. Petersburg hoped to impress." The suspicion that the lynching was accomplished with the connivance of local leaders was confirmed by a published interview with J. P. Walsh, a friend and partner of Sherman's who came to St. Petersburg from Camden, New Jersey, to investigate the murder. Walsh assured the Camden Courier that Evans had been tried and convicted by a secret committee composed of fifteen St. Petersburg's most respected citizens. The fact that this kind of behavior was acceptable to Walsh, or even conceivable, much less a reality, reveals an abuse of authority and privilege that was as barbaric as the frenzy of the lynch mob itself.

The local press also contributed to the mounting hysteria by implicitly condoning mob violence. Although both the St. Petersburg Times and the St. Petersburg Evening Independent editorialized against lynch law as an abstract principle, their news reports on the affair were consistently inflammatory. Playing up the sexual theme, they suggested that lynching was the inevitable outcome whenever black men sexually assaulted white women. The Tampa Tribune and the Clearwater Sun issued unequivocal denunciations of the Evans lynching, but the local press did not agree. Even William L. Straub, the Michigan native who periodically professed to be "a friend of the negroes," counseled his readers to restrain their guilt, "for the whole world knows that the same brute under the same circumstances would have met the same fate in any one of their towns." Lew B. Brown, the editor of the Evening Independent, also offered no apologies to the local black community, although he was quick to point out that John Evans was an outsider. "It should be remembered," Brown wrote, "that John Evans was not a St. Petersburg negro; he came here only a few weeks ago from Dunnellon. It is usually the negroes who stray in here and stay only a short while who commit crimes. The bulk of the St. Petersburg negroes are honest, straightwalking people who are industrious and well-behaved." In a similar vein, Straub reprinted an editorial from the Ocala Star which argued that Evans was "a bad character" who had been convicted of grand larceny by the Marion County Superior Court. "It was probably safe," the editorial went on, "to lynch him on general principles whether he was guilty of the crime he was accused of or not." In the age of Jim Crow, this was as much contrition and reconciliation as blacks could hope for.

The presence of a large black population and the harsh character of local race relations gave St. Petersburg a southern flavor. But this was something that the city fathers did not like to advertise. Local publicists took great pains to disassociate St. Petersburg from the languishing cities of the Deep South. "St. Petersburg can scarcely be called a typical Southern town," the editor of the 1912 city directory insisted, "except in respect of natural environment. The residents are from every state in the Union and from other countries beside." In truth, during the period 1888-1918, the city's population was almost evenly divided between Southerners and non-Southerners. However, not everyone who visited or lived in the city was aware of this regional balance, since it was sometimes obscured by the economic superiority and greater visibility of non-Southerners. While the local working class, both black and white, was largely southern-born, the local elite was dominated by Northern and British transplants. As the broad sample of early business and civic leaders in Table 1 demonstrates, the origins of St. Petersburg's upper crust were not what one would expect in a southern city.

A half-century before the Sunbelt phenomenon altered the regional configuration of American life, St. Petersburg experienced the coming together of Northern and Southern cultures. this experience ultimately led to a considerable amount of syncretism, as the city became a melting pot of regional cultures. But, in the early years, the perseverance of regional mores and loyalties was striking. The white"Cracker" culture of fishermen, railroad workers, draymen, and other southern natives was clearly distinguishable from the "Yankee" culture that dominated the downtown business community. Accentuated by class divisions, Southern patterns of cuisine, language, dress, kinship, and historical memory stood out in stark contrast to the cultural patterns of non-southern transplants. Whether they were regarded as quaint or uncouth, the Crackers often resented the Yankees' thinly disguised condescension. If necessary, they were willing to swallow their pride and work for Yankee interlopers, but they were not about to be improved by them. This cultural tension was a constant undertone of local life, although open conflict between Yankees and Crackers was relatively rare.

One exception was a near riot in 1911. On the eve of the city's annual Washington's Birthday parade, the local chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic threatened to pull out of the parade if the United Confederate Veterans were allowed to carry the Confederate flag. Although Confederate veterans had carried the flag in previous parades, school superintendent W. R. Trowbridge, the official in charge of the 1911 festivities, acceded to the GAR's demand. Trowbridge's decision caused an uproar among local Southerners, and he had to turn to the police to enforce his banning of the Confederate flag. On Washington's Birthday there were hard feelings all around and only the advanced age of most of the disputants prevented an all-out donnybrook. In the end, eve some Northerners expressed sympathy for the ex-Confederates' plight, and on February 25 Trowbridge was forced to resign. The Confederate stars and bars reappeared in subsequent parades, and the GAR never forced the issue again.

The ex-Confederates' victory in the "little civil war" of 1911 was based in part on a humane concern for a band of fragile old soldiers who had already suffered more than their share of humiliations. But it also reflected an emerging white supremacist consensus. The lost cause of the Confederacy was gaining new respectability, even in the North, and the rising popularity of Jim Crow was one of the reasons why. In race relations, more than in any other area, southern traditions tended to dominate St. Petersburg's local mores. Encouraged by statewide Jim Crow laws, the city's transplanted Northerners often mimicked southern white supremacists. Indeed, it was sometimes the Northerners who pushed the hardest for segregation. In many cases, of course, more than mimicry was involved. Unaccustomed to a biracial society that entailed personal contact between blacks and whites, many transplanted Northerners welcomed the restrictive barriers of Jim Crow. In a 1981 interview, Paul Barco, the son of a black bartender who migrated to St. Petersburg in 1905, recalled his father's explanation for the hardening of local segregationist sentiment in the years before World War I:

My daddy said when he came to this city, if you had to go to a doctor, you went on over to the doctor. He had one waiting room there, he waited on whoever was there. And the people who were in there were rustic [white] people, just like others [who were black]. They were not the polished persons from elsewhere, who probably had never been around a [black] person. But my dad said as these persons began to come down who had the great amounts of finance and they had been exposed to a great deal of literary training, then these people felt that they didn't care to sit in the same rom with these [black] people.

Whatever their origin, Jim Crow institutions created more solidarity than divisiveness among local whites. Regional subcultures persisted, but differences of opinion on matters of race were seldom the animating force behind this persistence. In early twentieth-century St. Petersburg, regional differences took on special importance primarily because the local white community lacked the ethnic and religious heterogeneity found in most other America cities. St. Petersburg's native-born white population was overwhelmingly WASPish, and even the city's small foreign-born population was predominantly Anglo-American. Prior to the 1920s, the city attracted few settlers of eastern or southern European origin, and only a handful of Asians, Jews and Hispanics. Even Irish Catholics were rare; indeed, the local parish could not even justify a full-time resident priest until 1917. Thus, other than economic class, the regional split between southerners and non-southerners was the white community's most obvious internal dividing line.

Despite its ethnic and religious homogeneity, St. Petersburg was a divided city - racially, regionally, and sexually - a community whose internal life was more complicated than outer appearance would suggest. Without the contributions of women, blacks, and Florida Crackers - the three groups who did most of the hard labor that sustained the city's growth - St. Petersburg would have remained an unheralded village. And yet, with the exception of a few privileged upper-middle-class white women, these unsung heroes and heroines of the Florida dream were not allowed to participate in the city's public life. Nor were they allowed to intrude into the carefully crafted image that the city projected to the outside world. During the early twentieth century, virtually all American communities expended some effort to idealize and sanitize their public images. But St. Petersburg was one of the first amenities to take such efforts to extremes. Devoted to the concept of selling itself, St. Petersburg entrusted its fate to the twin gods of public relations and advertising. This commitment to image-making was a natural outgrowth of the city's dependence on the art of buying and selling land - or more specifically, its dependence on the grand masters of this art. For better or worse, the city's character was molded by the dream merchants of sun and sand.

The economic downturn of 1917-1918 shook the community to its foundations, but the citizens of St. Petersburg had even more somber events to ponder during these years. The Great War took the lives of sixteen local soldiers, including two black men, and no doubt everyone in the city was touched in some way by this tragic loss of life. Yet, even in its grief, St. Petersburg remained a divided city. The names of the dead, both black and white, were engraved on a war memorial placed in Williams Park. But, in an act of gratuitous, although perhaps unthinking, disrespect, the sponsoring committee made sure that the word "colored" was affixed to the names of the black dead, providing future generations with a haunting reminder that the city of sunshine was also a city of shadow.